Not Voluntary ...

Palestinian children inspect damage to their homes caused by Israeli airstrikes on January 3, 2024, in Rafah, Gaza. Ahmad Hasaballah / Getty Images

Channeling the Nazis, Israel, under the far right regime of Netanyahu, has codified its mission to drive out the Palestinians in the pursuit of a greater Israel.

Palestinians have known all along that the real objective of Israel’s horrendous assault on Gaza is emptying the Strip of all Palestinians and the return of Jewish settlements. After nearly 90 days of relentless bombardment and a lackluster effort on the part of the Israeli government to negotiate the release of the hostages taken by Hamas, it has become clear even to Israelis that Netanyahu’s declared goals of “dismantling Hamas, returning our hostages, and ensuring that in Gaza there will be no one that threatens Israel” are nothing more than a cover for the government’s “transfer” plan.

The “transfer” — or “voluntary migration” as some Israeli officials are calling it — is now being promoted as the humane solution for the people of Gaza who now populate a parcel of land that has been rendered completely unlivable, a fulfillment of a promise made by several Israeli government officials after the October 7 Hamas attack. Recall Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant saying, “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.… We will eliminate everything — they will regret it.” Or retired Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland telling Israeli media, “Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal. Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.”

Top Hamas officials were killed following a massive explosion at an apartment in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, January 2, 2024 [Hussein Malla/AP Photo]

Now, with the killing of Hamas officials in Lebanon in hand, the possibility of an expanded war looms.

Washington and Tel Aviv have sought to maximize pressure on Hezbollah by warning of the possibility of a large-scale war between Israeli forces and the Lebanese resistance. These tactics were in effect long before the assassination of Hamas’ Deputy Head of the Political Bureau Saleh Al-Arouri on 2 January by an Israeli air strike in Dahiyeh, the southern suburb of Beirut. The killing of Al-Arouri now exponentially increases the chance of the war expanding.

People walk with belongings from an apartment building destroyed after Tuesday's Russian attack, Kyiv, Ukraine, January 3, 2024 [Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo]

As stated before, ineptness as art form is part and parcel of how the US & Biden does FP.

Geopolitical analysts broadly agree that the war in Ukraine and the West Asian crisis will dictate the trajectory of world politics in 2024. But a reductionist thesis appears alongside that views the Israel-Palestine conflict narrowly in terms of what it entails for the resilience of the US proxy war in Ukraine – the assumption being that the locus of world politics lies in Eurasia.

The reality is more complex. Each of these two conflicts has a raison d’être and dynamics of its own, while at the same time also being intertwined.

Washington's neck-deep involvement in the current phase of the West Asian crisis can turn into a quagmire, since it is also tangled up with domestic politics in a way that the Ukraine war never has been. But then, the outcome of the Ukraine war is already a foregone conclusion, and the US and its allies have realized that Russia cannot be defeated militarily; the endgame narrows down to an agreement to end the conflict on Russia’s terms.

Any questions?